Why is this important? Imagine having a captive audience waiting for our information every minute of the day. By positioning ourselves as an industry expert, we can grow a small community of followers, who will have a direct connection to CRMIT and who recognize us and our business brand! Twitter provides a great platform to connect with the right people to fit our business needs.

We have a curious problem in our apartment, Not something which can be resolved by calling a plumber or electrician.

There are 8 flats in this apartment and we have a small association of owners. We meet once in a while and discuss things such as maintenance fee, current issues, possible solutions etc.,

In paper, this sounds good, But in reality, it’s near impossible for us to gather all the house owners (just 8 of them) in one place. So, we kept postponing these meetings and many issues went untouched.

One fine day, we decided to sort this by using the power of internet. Someone created an Email group, asked all the owners to join there and we started interacting regularly. As we could read / respond to Emails offline at our convenience, this was very useful and we all liked it.

All, except two.

One of these owners, had an Email ID, But never used it. So he missed all important updates and was always raising a flag on every issue ‘when did you discuss this? I am not even aware of it!’

‘But we sent you an Email.’

‘Sorry, I don’t check my mail at all, you should have called me in phone and informed.’

Another owner, didn’t even know what an Email is. In fact, he never touched a computer in his life till date. So, he missed all updates too.

Thankfully, the other 6 owners had active Email IDs, and were checking / responding to Emails. But we could see some mismatches in the frequency of checking Emails, for example, couple of us checked Emails every few minutes, while others did it by end of the day, or even end of the week. As a result, we couldn’t make any decisions fast enough.

To summarize, eventho’ we had an Email group and discussing things, there is no assurance that all the concerned people get updated promptly. This brings down the overall effectiveness of the Email Group itself.

If this is the case with just 8 members, imagine what will happen with Marketing teams trying to push messages to hundreds of thousands of customers in their CRM Database. You may be sending a beautiful Email Newsletter, but 20% of your contacts may never open it, another 20% may open it late, effectively spoiling your party.

With “Social” messages, the risk is even higher. Most of your contacts in the CRM Database, may not be active in Social Media / check updates regularly, What is the point in touching base with them at great expense? May be they need to be contacted in a different channel?

To take care of this serious communication issue, it is advisable for marketing organizations to start analyzing their existing contacts and split them into different buckets such as:

Email Aware

Email Active

Social Media Aware

Social Media Active

None

This is just a sample, we may have more buckets like this, but the point is, if we know how active the contact is in various channels (by just asking them, “What is your preferred mode of communication? Email / Phone/ Twitter / Facebook / Others?”) we can push the same message to different people in different channels and expect a higher HIT Rate.

For example, a single campaign message may go to 20% of my contacts via direct mail (Post), another 20% in Email, 40% by Social Media etc., based on the bucket where they are. This way we ensure that a message has a higher chance of making an impact, by not falling on an inactive inbox / facebook wall.

When we think about high-performance indicators within business verticals, two factors stand out: customer satisfaction and experience. Importance of efficiently answering Emails (which may actually be service requests, complaints, grievances, appreciations, request for more business and so on) coming from customers cannot be overstated. This forms an interesting divide: Emails Vs CRM Records!

As of now, Email Messages sent to customers and responses received from them are updated manually in CRM System by the corresponding Owners (Sales Executives, Service Reps etc.,), Means, unnecessary human intervention and possible errors. What if a new service issues from customers is not converted to a service request? No one will start working on it immediately and there is a possibility of missing the SLA and penalties attached to it.

In addition to this, quick response time and a direct impact on the end user satisfaction being critical factors, manual conversion led to a redundant delay in response time.

Developed by CRMIT, an Oracle Gold Partner specialized in CRM On Demand, CRM++ Email Workbench is a Web based plug-in designed to solve the puzzle of CRM : Email Co-existence. CRM++ Email Workbench allows Sales and Service Organizations to work in a single window: the CRM system. Employees needn’t switch between CRM and Email Windows anymore, all incoming and outgoing Emails are handled by Email Workbench in the background!

As the CRM system knows about all this communication, this leads to better tracking of issues and quicker response times, irrespective of which individual is working on a particular problem.

CRM++ Email Workbench automatically tracks all e-mails (including attachments) and converts them to Service Requests / Leads / Opportunities / Other in your Oracle CRM On Demand system. From that point, CRM users can respond to these mails, without ever leaving their CRM screen. This will ultimately result in faster response times, improved customer service and satisfaction.

CRMIT, an Oracle ISV and one of the leading CRM On-Demand System Integrators in EMEA, has developedSocialCRM++, an efficient collaboration system for managing customer relationships and data in a well-organized and process-centric way. SocialCRM++ has the competence to bring new and dynamic methods for improving the quality and speed of interactions between your CRM On Demand users and the CRM data itself.

SocialCRM++ is built as a cloud-ready plug-in to CRM On-Demand, it allows you to seamlessly connect to broad set of data without losing any confidential information.

SocialCRM++ is a SaaS based Web 2.0 On Demand solution for Oracle CRM On Demand implementations. This changes the face of traditional, transactional CRM and makes it an information sharing platform, which is fun to use and at the same time improving productivity. Your CRM users can follow each other / share public / private messages / respond to others / form groups and interact / follow important CRM records / share URLs / Files and more. If you are having a hybrid model of deployment, you can use SocialCRM++ to collaborate between your CRM Users and Non-CRM Users too!

To summarize, SocialCRM++ incorporates all the basic features of a social app including secure interfaces to follow people, post status updates, respond, share, create or manage groups, events, post files and lots more; all with a CRM focus. So, you will be able to target all your social messages around CRM records, documents or even general topics, as per your requirement. CRMIT’s SocialCRM++ is available in multiple deployment models : It can be hosted within your premises, or in a private / public cloud.

Today I was reading an eBook. It is released by a marketing company, specializing in Social Media. They have different monitoring tools to listen to what people are talking about you in various Social Channels, and act accordingly.

However, this eBook had nothing to do with Monitoring. Instead the book talks about how Pinterest, the newest ‘Social’ darling can be utilized by businesses. They were showing samples on how various companies are enjoying added traffic / eye balls because they decided to join Pinterest, or provide a way for their readers to ‘Pin’ their articles.

To prove that Pinterest is really useful, this eBook had lots and lots of screenshots. Very useful for someone new to this. I liked it.

But the best part is, all those screenshots had a text description like this : “This is a screenshot from our <<<>>>> monitoring tool”.

What a nice, simple, subtle, yet powerful way of marketing your product! The reader wants to know if Pinterest is really going to help them, the book provides proof that it is the case, at the same time also conveys an indirect message ‘If you want to confirm Pinterest is really working for you, go for our Monitoring tool. It works, here is the proof!’

How many times have you seen a person trying to use a hammer while fixing a car’s engine, despite knowing the fact that he will not succeed? Or may be somebody trying to drive a nail from the rubberized side of a screwdriver, which is equally useless. We all know that every tool has a purpose, but still there are some always looking for an opportunity to use a tool for a reason other than what it is designed for. Same is the case with CRM.

Some businesses often make the mistake of taking Customer Relationship Management as software where all the data can be populated and problems will be solved magically. However, the truth is, CRM works like a discipline, where CRM software can be used to upgrade the discipline and automate its data management features. It is a tool and only using it right can facilitate you in finding success. Its applications do not create a problem, but the pesky users who work with it make it happen. Let’s have a look at common misuses of CRM.

CRM Systems & Sales Managers

With one of the toughest job profiles in an organization, sales managers are always fully loaded with the responsibility of motivating and communicating with group of people regarding byzantine information, be it lead changes, new collateral, sales contests and so on. Therefore, sales managers get an automated insight into sales pipeline through Customer Relationship Management software via how quickly sales staff enters the data into CRM. Though blunt words from managers, at times, can prove helpful for salespeople, but overdoing it may cause a drop in usage of CRM system. And due to the unpleasant behavior of the manager, sales staff will quickly catch on to the source of his anger and will gradually stop using CRM system, thinking that why load the system with data that will ultimately drive manager to turn around and use the data against them. So, if sales managers do not want to get into a situation where they will have only a partial idea of how the pipeline looks like, they should be careful while using info from CRM system.

CRM : A Silo Or Tool for Breaking Silos?

CRM is very good at collecting data, be it comprehensive reports or customer records, but these are just a way to increase the office paper costs, particularly if not put to some use. This is a common problem, because many organizations make sure that data is flowing into the system and is keeping sales organized, but actually fail to connect with the rest of the organization. The data that was equally helpful for support, marketing and R&D team may not be able to make it to other constituents, just because there is no pathway. Now, this is an organizational issue that should be tackled at the outset of CRM strategy development. So, it is always advisable to use CRM system in a way that it breaks down silos, rather of becoming a silo itself.

Already being delivered as a comprehensive suite of modular applications, Oracle Fusion apps are enriched with the potential of coexisting with existing Oracle apps. This pioneered advancement not only matches the current business needs and improves efficacy of the existing system, but also ensures a new level of performance. Here are some new features of Fusion CRM that are worth sharing…

Customizable Dashboards: Are you facing problems in finding specific insight to data that you need? If yes Fusion CRM has a solution for you. It allows you to simply customize your sales dashboards with smarter reports. Know more about this feature by just following this You tube video link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCotrQ8H6gM&feature=related

Contact Data Quality: Can you keep bad data from bugging down your CRM system? With fusion CRM it is possible. From automatically validating the record to checking records for duplicate data, Fusion CRM does it all. To find how Fusion CRM built in data management dashboard helps with ongoing data cleansing and taking immediate corrective action , click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp0NEpJZT4Y&feature=related

Native Outlook Client: Is your sales team double entering customer interactions or not entering them at all? Fusion CRM has a true outlook plug-in that avoids manually entering information from outlook to CRM. All you need to do is create your mail in outlook and share it with fusion CRM automatically. Know more about how to make better communication and coordination with the team, by just clicking here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkyN6Pcyntg&feature=related

Native Mobile App: Do you need to work with your customer data away from your laptop. Fusion CRM lets you sell smarter wherever you are. You can simply use fusion mobile to access contacts, accounts and opportunities. To know how, view this You Tube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKy4xn62wyk&feature=related

Territory Management: Assigning territory offline always creates gaps and overlaps, thus preventing you from maximizing your revenue. But with Fusion CRM you can model your territories right within the system. Know more about deploying your territories with confidence by clicking this video link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXCg21ttosw&feature=related

Sales Coach: How do you make every sales performer a top performer? Well, Fusion CRM coaches every representative with your best practices. Click here to know how reps can continue getting best practice sales that can coach all the way through to close http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBdB8ME5e2E&feature=related

Opportunity Landscape: Are you spending too much on prospecting? Fusion CRM allows you to keep a check on lead quality and aging. So, to learn how this new feature facilitates with less prospecting and more selling, just follow the link here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ4RiIEejR0&feature=related

Integrated Sales Contracts: Is completing your contract harder than selling? Fusion CRM allows your sales people to create contract faster. It makes it simple to preview contracts and generate printable version for the customers. Follow the link to know how you can also be freed from delays, thus leaving you more time to sell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwXtZHCYNtY&feature=related